Breakdown at Precinct 995

UPDATED: Of all the voting problems to have, this one may be the most ridiculous: The Broward Supervisor of Elections ran out of ballots at three precincts, leading to longer waits and lines with hundreds of people.

The lines formed at the Rick Case auto dealership at Griffin Road and I-75 in Weston. Another precinct affected is at the Westview Lakes Clubhouse at 9200 Taft Street in Pembroke Pines.

Ballots have been restored at the Rick Case precincts and the line -- with 200 to 300 people -- is moving now.

Will update.

-- This just came across from Local 10 reporter Tamika Bickham, who is trying to vote right now at Precinct 995, where she has found a debacle.

"They tell me the wait is 5 hours," Bickham emailed. "People leaving now were here since 8:30 a.m. They say inside it is extremely disorganized. People are walking out of line and deciding not to vote."

We have the chopper over the location now and will be reporting on the problem at 5 and 6. For background, this morning this comment was posted on the Eye on Miami blog:

"3.5 hour waits for those that arrived at 7 a.m. Plenty of voting booths, yet only half of them (at most) are filled at one time. 3 workers screening people in and then voters are sent to one table to receive their ballot. This is the choke point. From the time a voter gets to the first table of three to when they receive their voting slips at the second table is 20 min. That is simply too much time for a line of 200+."

So this problem has been brewing all day and has apparently only gotten worse. There have been other minor problems reported but this one seems to be the worst at this point. Here's an email sent in from Gina Fitzpatrick in Dania Beach.

"It seems that Dania Precinct 6 (Frost Park Rec Center) is now down to 1 voting machine when we had plenty voting machines for the republican primary in which I was able to get in and out rather quickly.

My husband has been in line for an hour and they said it will be another hour. There is no way the entire precinct will be able to cast a vote by the time the polls close tonight. Please help!"

All I can do at this point is broadcast it. You can keep up with all the races on the Local 10 election page tonight and I'll be reporting live on the web. Will update with link when I do.

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